ROME (AP) — Riding a meteoric rise, Giorgia Meloni with her nationalist party appeared well positioned to give Italy its first far-right-led government since World War II, according to projections based on a partial vote count Monday from elections for Parliament.
“Italy moves to the right,” Italian daily La Stampa headlined its front page in an early Monday edition.
The formation of Italy’s next ruling coalition with the help of right-wing allies could take weeks. But if Meloni succeeds, she would be the first woman to hold the country’s premiership.
Her main campaign allies and likely coalition partners are anti-migrant League leader Matteo Salvini and conservative former Premier Silvio Berlusconi.
Projections based on just over one-fifth of votes counted from Sunday’s balloting suggested that Meloni’s Brothers of Italy, a party with neo-fascist roots, would win some 25% of the vote. That compared to some 19% by the closest challenger, the center-left Democratic Party of former Premier Enrico Letta. The projections on Italian state TV had a margin of error range of 2-5 percentage points.
Meloni’s strong showing heartened her allies in Europe, intent on shifting the European Union’s politics sharply to the right.
Fellow Euroskeptic politicians on the far-right spectrum were among the first to celebrate. Poland’s prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, congratulated Meloni in a tweet. French politician Marine Le Pen’s party also hailed the result as a “lesson in humility” to the EU.
Santiago Abascal, the leader of Spain’s far-right Vox opposition party, celebrated Meloni’s lead, tweeting that “millions of Europeans are placing their hopes in Italy.” She “has shown the way for a proud and free Europe of sovereign nations that can cooperate on behalf of everybody’s security and prosperity.”
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Meloni’s far-right alliance leads in Italian elections https://t.co/CGfrQhhxPA pic.twitter.com/B5uyg894Sh
— The Hill (@thehill) September 26, 2022
Record low turnout.
— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) September 26, 2022
BREAKING: Italy appears to have elected its most right-wing government since World War II, after exit polls for today's general election suggested a coalition led by Giorgia Meloni is on course for power.https://t.co/lOZo6W8KFC
— POLITICOEurope (@POLITICOEurope) September 25, 2022
GOP lawmakers celebrate right-wing candidate’s win in Italian elections https://t.co/s24vvcSuHh pic.twitter.com/ziAyKhr3aK
— The Hill (@thehill) September 26, 2022
Why sweat the details? It's Italy, the new gov't will last 8 months, a year tops. https://t.co/DBfFNHI6qm
— John Schindler (@20committee) September 26, 2022
John Schindler is right. I can remember visiting Italy for a few days back in the 1970s. There was one government in place when I arrived and another one in place a few days later when I left. Very unstable.
Of course, radical GOP thinks Miss Meloni’s election is just swell. Authoritarians and fascists love each other.
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